1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to optical communication equipment and, more specifically, to optical amplifiers, attenuators, and/or wavelength converters.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical communication systems employ optical parametric devices (OPDs), e.g., to compensate for optical-signal attenuation in transmission fibers and/or regenerate optical signals. An OPD usually has a nonlinear fiber (NLF) or nonlinear planar optical waveguide (NPOW) that enables various four-wave mixing (FWM) processes to occur and be used to amplify, attenuate, frequency-convert, phase-conjugate, regenerate, and/or sample optical communication signals.